Burger restaurant chain Honest Burgers has secured a £17m refinancing package from Santander as it aims to grow the company to 50 sites by 2020.

The package includes an £8m capex loan, which will allow the company to open seven new sites in the next 12 to 18 months.

The group has today announced that among them will be a new 75-cover site in Bristol, to open this year.

Santander first provided growth capital funding to Honest Burger in 2013, which aided the roll out of four sites in Portobello Road, King’s Cross, Market Place (Oxford Circus) and Tooting.

In January 2015 – when the company had ten sites – it secured £7m investment from private equity firm Active Private Investment, with a view to opening five new sites within 12 months.

Shrena Patel, relationship director of the London Consumer Team at Santander Corporate and Commercial said: “Honest Burgers have started to move out in to the regions. The plan as they grow is for them to find the right sites and go national. The seven new sites this year will open up around 140 new jobs which is great, and they aim to open up to 50 sites by 2020, so it’s a really good growth plan and we really see it happening. They are very customer and employee focused and we are happy to support them.”

Honest Burgers was founded by Dorian Waite, Tom Barton and Phil Eles. It opened its first site in Brixton in 2011. It now has 25 sites across the UK including 23 in London, one in Cambridge and one in Reading.

The company’s latest accounts for the period ending 29 January 2017 showed a 51% increase in turnover to £15.6m and a 8.3% rise in EBITDA. The company is expected to open more restaurants this year.